The world we are in today is likely to end catastrophically, as many other human worlds have done before.

"Romanticizing the past" is a familiar accusation, made mostly by people who think it is more grown-up to romanticize the future.

We like to think that the fate of the Earth and the fate of human worlds are the same thing, but we're not as important as that.

In most novels, the landscape, or the place, in which the story takes part is simply a backdrop to the human action.

Hope, like despair, is something of a distraction: it gets in the way of a clear view of the horizon.

I think we take the history we want to take in order to back up the stories we want to hear.

A man hears what he wants to hear, and disregards the rest. I think that kind of thing is an abuse of history.

It's always hard for an author to determine his own intentions, especially in retrospect.

Being creative is not being afraid of being lost.

The difference between doing something and not doing something is doing something.

He has got the slows, Mr. Blair.

Should I be grateful or should I curse the fact that despite all misfortune I can still feel love, an unearthly love but still for earthly objects.

For me, a tour show should have a narrative; it should have an arc. It shouldn't just be, "Here's one joke, here's another joke." That's not my style. They all have to somehow link together.

The right to be a journalist is part of the Bill of Rights.

There is no pillow as soft as a clear conscience.

What signs fail to express, their application shows. What signs slur over, their application says clearly.

I'm Jim Phillips, I have multiple personalities. I'm also a skindiver, a puppeteer, and I was the tenth president of the United States.

Never anything can be amiss, when simpleness and duty tender it.